Category Archives: Stoicism

Acting with Reservation

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In my post, Under My Control? The Wisdom to Know the Difference, I wrote of knowing which things are those we cannot change.  While it is extremely helpful to know these things, the fact of the matter is that there is no 100% guarantee that things will turn out the way we think.

It is for this reason, that the Stoic acts with reservation.  I wrote about this before in my “Unless…” entry, but this concept bears repeating.

There will always be “chance” in our future…

To maintain that sense of equanimity in our lives, while still pursuing that which we would like to attain (mainly for the sake of virtue, we hope) we must continue to act fully expecting that the outcome may not be to our liking.

For example, many years ago I was a student pilot in the military.  Without conceit, I can tell you that I was one of the most conscientious students you could find.   During this training there were 3 flying exams (called check rides), and despite my best efforts, I flunked one of them.  I just could not land the airplane that day, and this particular test counted more than any of the others.  In retrospect, the combined conditions of my own skill, flight conditions of the day, and the demands of the course arranged for failure to be my fate.  Of course, this went into my class score, and I will tell you that a great majority of the class did not fail this check ride.  Well, at the time not everybody was getting assigned to fly airplanes after graduation, and of course my class rank was low due to that failed check ride.  So, there was really no way I was going to get an airplane assignment.  In the end, I had to wait 3 years before I would be assigned an airplane.  There was nothing I could do to change this, so I had to put my best effort forward, simply defending what I thought was my mediocre reputation.

Getting ready for another flight…I can fly!

Now, I would not call myself a Stoic at the time.  However, I simply wanted to earn my wings as a pilot, regardless of whether I would fly right away.  As a result, I carried on.  If I were stoically inclined, it would have been helpful to my goal with two things in mind:

  1. Possibly, I might not attain that goal because of much of this outcome is out of my control
  2. I will put my best effort forward simply for the satisfaction that I did so

In the end, I did go on to fly, and every day I am grateful for the opportunities it provided me.  Now that I have embraced the Stoic philosophy, I pursue yet another goal: to spread the ideas of the Stoics to those who need them.  I think they are out there, we shall see.

Until then, I keep staring at my site’s traffic count, and I write for the sake of my own virtue.

A Simply Awesome and Beautiful Passage from “The Meditations”

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Sit down. calmly take a few breaths and count to 10.  Now, are you relaxed?  Good!  This is indeed a great meditation.  It is Marcus Aurelius to himself from his “Meditations” Book 4 (I tried to make it less “Roman” while still preserving the beauty with some edits.  Let me know how I did, please):

“Do not waste the remainder of your life in thoughts about others, when you do not refer your thoughts to some object of common utility. For then, you lose the opportunity of doing something else more productive when you have these thoughts. “What is such a person doing and why?  What is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving?”  And whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from the observation of our own rational behavior.

We ought then to check our thoughts for everything that is without a purpose, but most of all the over-curious feeling malignant thoughts; and a man should use himself to think of those things only about which if one should suddenly ask, “What are you thinking about?”  With perfect openness you could, immediately answer, This or That; so that from your words it should be plain that everything in you is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a virtuous social being, and one that cares not for thoughts about pleasure or sensual enjoyments at all, nor has any rivalry or envy and suspicion, or anything else for which you would blush if you should say that you had it in your mind.

For the man who is such and no longer delays being among the number of the best, is like a priest and minister of the gods, using too the deity which is planted within him, which makes the man uncontaminated by pleasure, unharmed by any pain, untouched by any insult, feeling no wrong, a fighter in the noblest fight, one who cannot be overpowered by any passion, dyed deep with justice, accepting with all his soul everything which happens and is assigned to him as his portion; and not often, nor yet without great necessity and for the general interest, imagining what another says, or does, or thinks. For it is only what belongs to himself that he makes the matter for his activity; and he constantly thinks of that which is allotted to himself out of the sum total of things, and he makes his own acts fair, and he is persuaded that his own portion is good. For the lot which is assigned to each man is carried along with him and carries him along with it.

And he remembers also that every rational animal is his kinsman, and that to care for all men is according to man’s nature; and a man should hold on to the opinion not of all, but of those only who confessedly live according to nature. But as to those who do not live this way, he always bears in mind what kind of men they are both at home and from home, both by night and by day, and what they are, and with what men they live an impure life. Accordingly, he does not value at all the praise which comes from such men, since they are not even satisfied with themselves.”

As with all great passages, reading it again will reveal EVEN MORE.

Under My Control? The Wisdom to Know the Difference

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“…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference…”  from the Serenity Prayer attributed to Reinhold Neibuhr

I’ve referred to the Serenity Prayer before in this previous post.  It’s the “wisdom to know the difference part,” that I want to reflect on today.  As a practicing Stoic, I know that there are many facets of my life that are not in my control.  But how do I know what is and what isn’t?

In his book, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, William B. Irvine says we have a trichotomy of control:  1) things we can control, 2) things we have partial control of, and 3) things we have no control over.  This is a great idea, it simplifies things.  In reality though, I see my life as a series of things that fall somewhere on a continuum of control.  For every aspect of our lives, there is a portion that we have control over, and a portion that we don’t.   For the sake of analogy, while Irvine pictures a 3-position switch, I tend to see a volume switch (a rheostat) that fate uses to adjust the “control level.”

A volume rheostat…more volume, more control?

There is a continuum of control in just about everything in my life.  Whether or not I will overeat for dinner tonight is completely under my command (unless I were held at gunpoint and told to overeat…still in my control, but less so).  In contrast, whether I will be able to afford a fancy dinner next year is partially in my control, but not completely.  I could unexpectedly lose my job, or inflation could take its toll and it would be too expensive.  Also, I might get really sick and have to make medical payments as well.  So many possibilities by then!  How much or how little I can change my destiny depends on an innumerable number of factors.  I don’t know where that volume switch of control will be next year, but I am certain it won’t be set at “completely mine.”  In any case, my entire day, my future, my end…are largely outside of my jurisdiction…much of it is indeed, fate.

This is great and all, but isn’t the key to serenity knowing what is and is not in your control, and how much?  Knowing this is not easy.  Not only does it require effort, but it requires quite a bit of intellect, no?

Which brings me to another point.  The amount of intellect we have to work with is completely out of our control; basically we are stuck with the brain we have.  However, the amount of effort we make to understand the nature of life…well, THAT is completely under our command.

So, the wisdom to know the difference between what we can and cannot change is two-fold.  Our natural intelligence is what we are stuck with, but our choice to exert effort on determining what we can change is ours to make completely.  There is an irony here:  even the “wisdom to know the difference” is both part in/part out of our control.

In any case, determining these things is very important to see things as they are, which I think is essential to living a virtuous life.  So regardless of the intellect I am given, gaining “the wisdom to know the difference” requires effort and time on my part.  I must take time to reflect on what is truly in my control, and I certainly will have to use the utmost of my reasoning abilities to decipher what I CAN control in my life, and what I must file under “acceptance.”  I see no better way to do this than to meditate and reflect on this frequently.

Lovingkindness: Gandhi, World Peace, and Family Happiness

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I woke up this morning ready for a fight.  I had some left over resentment from a disagreement I had with someone very close to me…my lovely wife to be perfectly honest.  All the while, I began to prepare for my next post about lovingkindness.  Oh the Irony!  To write about loving all sentient beings with unconditional love, yet holding back even a little to those close to you.   It doesn’t make much sense does it?   And yet, it happens all the time; while we are severe with those close to us, we put on the “happy” mask and interact with civility and agreement with complete strangers.

This got me to thinking (yes, here I go again).  Did Gandhi ever just wake up and decide to be a pain in the rear to those around him that day?  This question sent me on an internet journey to find out.  In retrospect, traveling down THAT rabbit hole consumed far too much of my time, but I finished the journey to my liking and learned a thing or two.  As it turns out, I found this internet entry where it explains that, “[Gandhi] was exceptionally demanding of himself, and demanding of those closest to him.  Whereas he displayed loving kindness to virtually everyone, with his family he could be quite severe.” I also found this Wikipedia entry about Kasturba Gandhi, his wife.  While the article was fair, I think you might come to the conclusion that Mr. Gandhi’s domestic life was far from serene.

After even further internet research, I discovered two very important concepts about Gandhi, the peace-warrior:

  1. Gandhi’s family life was very complicated, and it seems no different than many of our own internal family issues.  In fact, it may be that his extreme views and justice efforts made his family worse for the wear.
  2. Don’t go to the Internet for information if you want a straight answer.  There is a lot of unverified and conflicting stuff.

OK, the second one was not really about Gandhi, was it?  In any case, I think I have come to some closure on this Gandhi question.  If my current view of Gandhi is correct, that he spent far more energy on justice for his community than on tranquility in his home, then I do not want to emulate everything about him.  I think he missed a key portion of “how to live” if he did not convey lovingkindness to his wife and children, as he worked for peace in the macro sense.

In fact, there may be some validity in the idea that tranquility and lovingkindness begin at home.  I have often struggled with the concept of how difficult it would be to attain world peace, when I think about how difficult it is for those who are very close (like family) to come to be “at peace” with each other.  Marriage statistics alone tell part of the story.  In the U.S., around 45% of first marriages end in divorce (see http://www.divorcestatistics.org).  This does not even include those who never get married because they gave up, or those who stay married even if their relationship is violent, miserable, or fattening (I just put “fattening” in to see if you were paying attention).  Rhetorically I must ask, how many brothers and sisters don’t speak to each other?  How many father – son relationships are estranged?  Where is the love?

So what is the point, if I should have one?  I think the big take away is that “we” as humans have a long way to go to showing true lovingkindness.  I know “I” certainly do.  How can we show lovingkindness to all those around the world, when there is so much work to do with those we are closest to?  This REALLY seems like bad news!  Indeed, it is the bad news.

Now for the GOOD news!  Because there is such a gap between the kind of lovingkindness we strive to attain and what the reality of the situation is, creating more of it in your life is LOW HANGING FRUIT.  It should be very easy to send out even a little more to those close to us.

Well, as for my agitation with my wife, it’s gone; it was just silly.  In the end, it was more my faulty interpretation of things that really created the problem…I’m over it, except that I’m a little embarrassed about feeling that way.  As for the rest of my day, I am committing myself to conveying lovingkindness to those closest to me.  World peace will have to wait.

I am not worrying about “World Peace” today.

Will you join me?

Anchor #4: Persistence

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In Buddhism, there is an Eight-Fold Path to enlightenment, recommended to break the chain of suffering (called “Dukkha”).  The Eight-Fold Path as explained by most texts takes awhile to digest, and its components overlap in many ways.  It is a product of Eastern thought, which for lack of a better term, requires some absorption.  The path is a powerful concept to understand and put into practice in your pursuit of virtue.  Today, I will reflect on two of the eight because they have a lot to do with our Fourth Anchor, Persistence:  Right Effort and Right Concentration.  Together these two Eastern concepts will help me convey the value of persistence.

If we were to have perfect patience and nothing else we would wait for things to happen…and nothing would happen.  To complement patience, I would say we need to take actions to make ourselves and our surroundings better and to do so with persistence.   Persistence implies hard work…persistence is hard work.  We try and try over and over again, we fail, we get up.  To maintain our sanity, we must have patience; but to keep going, we must persist!

Champion Powerlifters Must Have Persistence – Lots of Right Effort!
(www.liftingpictures.com)

But at what should we persist?  Hitler was persistent, and so was Osama Bin Laden.  How do I guide myself to persistent good?  I have found the concept of Right Effort and Right Concentration to be very helpful guide to how we should persist.

It is at this point that I will explain Right Effort.  Right Effort requires that we persistently make effort to become more virtuous.  According to Zen this effort, to be right, should be focused on 4 endeavors:

  1. Prevent arising unwholesome views and feelings
  2. Abandon unwholesome views and feelings you already have
  3. Create new wholesome views and feelings
  4. Maintain the wholesome views and feelings that you have

This kind of effort requires persistence and lots of concentration.  Which brings us to Right Concentration.  To be persistent in our pursuit of the good, we must maintain our focus on it.  The best way, I think, to do this is to concentrate on what is important.  And the best way to concentrate on what is important is to reflect or meditate on what is important.   Concentrating on what will make us more virtuous is what makes it “right.”  With the Right Effort and Right Concentration, I can eventually get beyond “thinking about virtue” for 5 – 30 minutes a day, and create the motivation to live and act virtuously.

But of course, to be virtuous takes great persistence.  The world around you won’t change very much at all, despite your efforts; however, with time your view and your impact on your immediate world will change for the better.

…as long as you are persistent.